The March (40 page)

Each morning Pearl in her nurse’s uniform went to Calvin and washed and redressed his eyes with the salve Dr. Sartorius had prescribed. He was hunkering down with a group of women and children who attended to every move Pearl made. The first day or two the women held themselves aloof from the white lady but they were finally impressed by her daily visit and the care with which she was treating Calvin Harper. She brought rations, too, for them to share, and they thanked her kindly.

And how are y’all this morning, Pearl would say, and everyone would affirm their well-being. And, Calvin, how you farin? Calvin, blinking in the light with the bandage off, would say, I think a little better thank you, Miss Pearl.

The only thing Pearl didn’t like was that little David had chosen to stay with Calvin. The two were inseparable. For reasons she didn’t analyze, she was put out by the boy’s having attached himself in this way, though she supposed it was good there were other children here for him to play with. Well, David, she said one morning, I see you got you some friends. Yes’m, David said. Not yes’m, Pearl scolded, not yes’m, David. Just yes. Say it. And when he did, slightly puzzled, she said, And from now on that’s what you say to answer a question. Not yes’m or no’m but yes or no—two clear words like that, you hear? Yes’m, David replied, and everyone laughed, even Pearl. She was embarrassed that she had suddenly flared up so.

STEPHEN WAS GOING
about the preparations so patiently, in his fashion, that Pearl thought they would never be on their way. But he was refitting the struts that held up the canvas over the wagon bed and making the canvas taut, so that there would be more room inside for everything and everyone, and so that it would look like a well-maintained means of travel. For Calvin thought en route they could take pictures again and make a little money that way.

He can’t see to make a picture, Pearl said as she watched Stephen work.

He can teach us, if it comes to that. Everything it needs is here. All his trays and plates and chemicals. The camera is nicked a bit, is all.

Calvin says it was our Colonel-doctor who stowed it back in the wagon when he treated him out by the statehouse steps. He was kind underneath, wasn’t he? Though he never said much. Do this, hold that. But we did. And then he leaves without sayin a word. He just sets off.

Reassignment, Stephen said.

Yes, reassignment, but what does that mean ’cept he’s gone. I felt safe with him, didn’t you?

You are safe with me, Stephen said, and that was the end of that conversation. She knew how much he looked up to the doctor. But it wasn’t something he cared to talk about.

PEARL WAS SILENT
for a while. She was listening to the birds in the field. She watched the red-wing blackbirds skimming along the furrows, lighting on the bushes.

That David, she said. He don’t care for me no more. It’s Calvin he likes. Takes him by the hand everywhere, won’t leave his side. Don’t a child need mothering?

Stephen jumped down from the wagon bed. Calvin is a Negro.

I’m a Negro!

Stephen shook his head. No, Pearl, with skin as white as a carnation, not in that boy’s eyes.

He touched her face and brushed the tears. Nothing stays the same, he said. Not David, not Sartorius, not the army on the march, not the land it trods, not the living, and not even the dead. It’s always now, Stephen said with a sad smile for poor Albion Simms.

AND THEN A
few days later it was time to leave. Stephen came riding back from Raleigh. The end of the war was official and Generals Grant and Sherman were reviewing the troops. Pearl could hear the band music faintly even at this distance. They will be occupied for a while with the peace, Stephen said. He took off his tunic and cap and put on a plain jacket he had found in Mr. Josiah Culp’s costume pile.

They turned out of the road, and Stephen directed the mule to the campsite of the black folks and they picked up Calvin and the boy, and said their goodbyes. We will have at least a day’s start, Stephen said to Pearl. We are going due east, back through Goldsboro and to the coast. They will march the straight line to Richmond and Washington. We will be out of their way, and they out of ours.

SHERMAN, STANDING BESIDE
Grant on a platform with the American flag, felt the presence of the man. Grant was shorter than he was, but perhaps sturdier on his feet for that. He seemed to see something in the parade marchers of the Seventeenth Corps that made you look to see what it was. And they were Sherman’s men!

He had secret thoughts, Grant, you always felt that about him. Such private feelings of presumed depth that an ordinary mortal could only aspire to. Sherman had a respect for Grant akin to worship, but there was that assured thing about the man, that his private mind harbored no ill intent. He had no guile and no self-interest in this war, and that’s what was so unsettling.

The men seemed to know of this goodness as well, of this steady state of the man’s mind, and they marched by with a serious face, and even somewhat less proud than usual of their shabby grooming and dusty uniforms. What rose up from their ranks was awe.

And the terms of surrender after Grant had arrived to define them were simplicity itself. All acts of war by soldiers under Johnston’s command were to cease. All arms to be delivered to ordnance officers of the U.S. Army. Rolls to be entered of officers and men, and each one to obligate himself in writing not to take up arms against the Government of the United States. Side arms of officers and their private horses and baggage to be retained by them. Their written obligations done, all officers and men permitted to return to their homes. And Johnston and he had signed it, and with that penmanship the four-year war was over.

My not having rested my own perhaps overreaching negotiations with those clear, simple points has got me into trouble, given my leg to that political dog Stanton, who has published intimations that by my generosity to the Southies I may have been intending myself to overthrow the United States government with my army. Such is the thanks I get for my lifelong service to this republic. And now everything of the past four years has come down to a parade, as it will in Washington. We have been but marching to a politician’s parade.

Before I go up there, I want to find a cool grove of pine trees one more time. Sherman’s Special Field Order to himself: You are to go into the forest and pitch your tent, and light your fire and cook your dinner and go to sleep on the hard ground under the stars and wake at dawn with the silly birds in time to hear reveille. Then you may journey to Washington and stand for the parade.

Though this march is done, and well accomplished, I think of it now, God help me, with longing—not for its blood and death but for the bestowal of meaning to the very ground trod upon, how it made every field and swamp and river and road into something of moral consequence, whereas now, as the march dissolves so does the meaning, the army strewing itself into the isolated intentions of diffuse private life, and the terrain thereby left blank and also diffuse, and ineffable, a thing once again, and victoriously, without reason, and, whether diurnally lit and darkened, or sere or fruitful, or raging or calm, completely insensible and without any purpose of its own.

And why is Grant so solemn today upon our great achievement, except he knows this unmeaning inhuman planet will need our warring imprint to give it value, and that our civil war, the devastating manufacture of the bones of our sons, is but a war after a war, a war before a war.

ON THE WAY,
there was a discussion about the army mule, who as yet had no name. Calvin was loath to name him Bert. This one clopping along smartly is no Bert, Calvin said. He does what you ask. He has no character. Now, Bert he was smart. He wanted the good life for a mule, which was not necessarily what you wanted. He thought for himself, and if he did what you asked you knew it was by his leave or that he was going along for his own purposes.

Well, if we give this young one the name, Stephen said, maybe it will be inspiration for him, something to live up to. Bert the Second.

I hope not before we reach Baltimore, Calvin said.

They were making good time without trying to. The road was dry and beaten down hard by those thousands of army feet. At midday they turned off the road and went down the gentle slope of an untilled field, and found there a clear slow-moving stream, where the water divided on the rocks and boulders and met itself again in a determined way, like something with a mind. There was good shade under an oak tree, and Pearl put down a blanket for the midday meal of hardtack and salt pork and water from their canteens.

I am happy to be going home, Calvin said. He lifted the bandage over his eyes and said, You know, I really can see a little now—it is very much like a photograph beginning to come out in the developing tray. I see you in a grainy way, Miss Pearl. I see you, Corporal Walsh. And you, David, he said to the boy nestled in his lap, you are the easiest to see. He laughed.

Pearl took off her shoes and lay back in the grass and stretched. I feel free like never before, she said.

Calvin said, Culp and Harper, U.S. Army Photographers, has here in this wagon a precious store of army pictures. Mr. Josiah Culp and me, we were on the road for a good year. The pictures will bring in money besides being valuable in themselves for their history. And I am sure I will be busy taking portraits and carte de visites of the returning soldiers who will want one more picture of themselves in uniform before they take it off. I hope to make a good living. You are all welcome to join with me, he said after a moment. There could be enough for all of us.

Pearl had sat up. Stephen looked at her and cleared his throat, about to say something, but Calvin had pressed on. You have saved my life, he said. Your doctor was the one who used this wagon for an ambulance to take me back to his surgery. He saved my camera and Mr. Culp’s store of photos, and all I told him was my name and that I had tried to stop the shooting. And all of you have saved my life. I know you mean to go to New York City. But that is a long way from Baltimore and Baltimore is a long way from here, so maybe you would think again. Or maybe stay awhile with us, earn some money enough to ride the train up to New York and not worry about fodder for it.

Who is us? Pearl said.

Well, David and me and Jessie. She will love this boy.

David got up now and went to where the mule was grazing and patted its neck. Pearl watched him. Something on the ground caught his attention and he squatted down to look at it and then, with a twig, poke at it.

Jessie is your wife?

I am not the marrying kind. Jessie’s my sister. She is a maiden lady who has no children of her own. But she sews up quilts that she sells, and teaches the Sunday school in our church. The children love Jessie.

CALVIN AND THE BOY
both napped after lunch, and Pearl and Stephen walked downstream and found some stepping-stones to a big, wide rock in the center, and there they sat, Pearl with her skirt hiked up to her knees and her feet in the water.

Truth is, she said to Stephen, once I take that letter to the Lieutenant Clarke’s mama and daddy at the Number 12 Washing-ton Square I will come out their door, and which way I go, the left or to the right, or down this street or down that street, it don’t really matter ’cause I won’t know where I am or what I want to do with my free life.

You will come with me, Stephen said.

And if I be white until I have my black baby? Then what will you do?

I will be its father, if I am its father.

She looked at him, startled, until she saw the grin on his face. Naturally you are its father—who else would I have for a husband? Pearl said. You bein silly now—this a serious matter.

I have the three hundred dollars in the bank from my enlistment, Stephen said. I have thought about this. I want to read the law.

And what will I do?

You will go to the public school and catch up quick as a flash with your mind. And later will go to medical college.

You work that out for me?

I saw you in the surgery. You are a natural at doctoring. Don’t tell me you never thought of it.

I did until I ’membered I’m a nigger girl. You have a passel of plans for your three hundred dollars.

If they don’t let girls in medical college you will be the first, because I will argue the case in court. Pearl looked at him and shook her head. All at once her tears began to flow. Stephen Walsh could bear it no longer. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her on the lips and on the cheeks and on the eyes. Pearl was kissing him back and crying at the same time. They held each other.

If you want to take David with us, that is all right with me, Stephen whispered. He kissed her ear.

It different up there?

No.

You a crazy man, Stephen. You a soldier from the war but you don’t know the fearful life.

I think I do, he said, Irish as I am.

They sat quietly, looking at the water. Birds flew past them, following the path of the stream.

If I live white, how free am I?

Freer than the other.

Free everywhere ’cept in my heart. Is that freer than my mama Nancy Wilkins?

You will have to let the world catch up to you.

When’s that?

It may take some time.

She stood, and brushed her skirt. No, she said. He should go with Calvin and Jessie. Calvin didn’t bother to ask, but that’s the best thing for the chile. And we will write each other letters soon as he learns reading and writing.

LATER, BACK ON
the road, the shadows began to lengthen as the afternoon wore on. The green of the land grew softer, and the road, in a slow descent, passed into a valley. And then there was a dark, thick grove of pine where some of the war had passed through. A boot lay in the pine needles, and the shreds of a discolored uniform. Behind a fallen log, a small pile of cartridge shells. There was still a scent of gunfire in the trees, and they were glad to come out into the sun again.

Acknowledgments